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Blast in crowd kills 41 Shiite pilgrims in Iraq

Abdelamir Hanun

A bomb attack on the last day of a major mourning ceremony in Iraq killed 41 Shiite pilgrims and wounded more than 140 on Friday in an atrocity blamed on Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein loyalists.

Karbala's governor said mortar fire struck a crowd as the pilgrims headed home from the shrine city, 110 kilometres (68 miles) south of Baghdad, where more than a million devotees had gathered to mark the festival of Arbaeen.

A provincial health ministry official said 41 people were killed and 144 wounded, raising the overall death toll to more than 100 in three major attacks on worshippers who have for weeks been travelling to Karbala on foot for the climax of the event.

"A mortar round was launched from fields northeast of the city," Karbala's provincial governor Amalheddin al-Hir told AFP. "I accuse Al-Qaeda who are being supported by the Baath party," he said, referring to Saddam's outlawed political movement.

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Local police said the mortar round crashed into the pilgrims on the outskirts of Karbala as they were leaving the city.

However, an interior ministry official in Baghdad said the deaths had been caused by two car bombs.

The scene was sealed off and an AFP reporter was stopped from approaching.

Arbaeen marks 40 days after the Ashura anniversary commemorating the slaying of Imam Hussein, one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures, by the armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680 AD.

A series of suicide attacks have seen dozens of pilgrims killed in recent days. Around 30,000 police and soldiers were on duty in Karbala, following the spate of attacks.

Hir said earlier that 10 million worshippers had visited the Imam Hussein shrine in the past two weeks, after walking to Karbala as a sign of piety, with the ceremonies culminating at midday (0900 GMT) on Friday.

"The visitors included Arabs and about 100,000 foreigners from the Gulf states, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Tanzania, the United States, Norway and Belgium," said the governor, who appealed to neighbouring provinces to provide transport to speed up the pilgrims' exodus from Karbala.

Television pictures had showed crowds massed near the shrine stretching into the far distance and carrying flags adorned with Imam Hussein's image.

"I travelled all this distance to tell terrorists that their actions will not stop us from visiting Imam Hussein," Jaber al-Temimi, an Iranian who arrived three days earlier after walking from the border, told AFP.

On Monday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up among a crowd of Shiite pilgrims near Baghdad, an attack that killed 41 people including women and children, wounding more than 100 others.

She detonated an explosives-filled belt as devotees lined up for security checks at one of the many food and rest stations set up on the route to Karbala.

Defence ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari said the woman bomber came from Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, that has in the past been a stronghold of Al-Qaeda which still has a local presence.